Barbarians/Draconians/Trolls etc - best setup?

[occasionalplayer]

What are currently the best picks for each? Nelphine posted it once, but it kind of got buried in a superthread; moreover, we have a new version now (only 4 retorts)

I thought the following: 

Barbarians: Alchemy, Warlord, Specialist, Archmage/Spellweaver all life. Strategy: Build a cavalry stack first, conquer easy lairs/towns/maybe first AI, then berzerkers for the remainder. 

Draconians: Alchemy, not sure about warlord, not sure about everything else except Life Drain (send your swordsmen to war bear lairs/beastmen, dwarven villages) and life drain them crazy. Conquer easy lairs, then maybe a Troll city for War Trolls.

Trolls: Chaos to hit flyers or death. Try to rush war trolls.

Werewolves: Alldeath sage master specialist (halflings?). Maybe combined with the above draconian stuff to get skill.

Dark Elves: All sorcery maybe two nature for web. Apprentice spam with phantom warriors, then warlock spam, then late game sorcery units. 

I would appreciate input/corrections. THanks in advance!

[Nelphine]

Rich myrran warlord halflings with heroism is also ridiculous. I'm not sure the best for that yet, but the damage output of adamantium slingers is unbelievable.

[Bahgtru]

Rich in general is cheating we all know that, because it reduces the disparity of AI resource advantage.

On the same line, poor might be considered raised difficulty.

[Nelphine]

Only when rushing successfully, otherwise the AI has more cities, knows to settle cities near Ore, and bonuses mean the ore does more for the AI than the human.

Basically, if you don't plan to abuse adamamtium units (or dwaef power generation, both of which require myrran)
with your first 3 cities, rich makes the game harder.

[Bahgtru]

Not really.. Even just with say, 2 gold and 2 mana resources, the relative advantage in year 1 of the AI drops by a LOT. And that matters more than any other year put together.

Of course if you're just waiting with your 3 cities as you do that's different.

[Nelphine]

Right but in theory, the AI should settle cities faster than you, and it's it's smart about targetting ores, so, aside from getting very lucky on your first 3 cities, you should never actually have the advantage in number of ores you describe. If you do regularly, that should be reported as it implies the settling algorithm isn't working.

[Seravy]

With the current Rich settings, 4 ores on your starting city is quite above average luck.

Either way, you seem to understand. It ONLY matters for rush, otherwise the initial relative advantage quickly disappears.

(Note the initial advantage exists not because you get more ores, nor because you get a better percentage of resources out of them or anything like that. The AI also gets the usual bonus on the ores so on average the relative strength is unchanged. What makes the difference is you can spend those resources all on offense, and coordinate an efficient conquest using them while the same resources aren't enough to build up a defense that is an equal force to yours but in ALL the AI's new outposts and cities since any less isn't enough. Of course they might counterattack with their one stack - if the unit type is one that doesn't get held back in the garrison - but more realistically you destroy the units before they manage to group up and even if they do they will only conquer one of your cities and stay there - only intercontinental doomstacks can stay on the move and early game there are no good units for that, obviously. Nagas and Sprites are fairly easy to stop. Simply put, the AI won't yet have access to anything that can really matter, even with the extra resources. You only do because you planned around having it when you picked your wizard, and we clearly can't require all AI wizards to pick rush. (((would be an interesting last resort counter to rush though if it forced the nearest AI wizard to pick a rush/antirush race or realm or both.))))

[Bahgtru]

With the current Rich settings, 4 ores on your starting city is quite above average luck.

Not the starting city only. For the first 3 cities it's pretty normal. In normal finding them requires a lot of luck or exploration (time).

Either way, you seem to understand. It ONLY matters for rush, otherwise the initial relative advantage quickly disappears

The initial advantage is all that matters, for any strategy. Economy has maybe even more gain by starting quicker. It's not even an advantage compared with the AI - just a reduced disparity, but I guess we are on the same page on this. This has nothing to do with rush.

[occasionalplayer]

Wondering if Draconians with Life Drain is op, even without adamantium: 
You pick a lair with war bears or a beastmen/troll village (trolls better bc regen - you dont kill them before you want to), send your initial swordsmen and life drain every turn as often as you can. Simultaneously, your bowmen conquer all the easy lairs. Without the adamantium werewolves rush, you still can a) either conquer dark elves and try to spam apprentices/nightblades/warlocks or b) take Trolls and go for war trolls. Is that intended? Don't think it is gamebreaking on master/lunatic (you still have to spend the mana on your reiterated life drain spells), but could still be significant.